


The disappearing Cadets

by thebirdsandtheboxes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam's POV, Don't expect Jonathan's genious from me, Gen, I mostly wrote this to get it out of my head, It was a lot of fun to write though, Okay not as good as those but in the general style, POV First Person, Set around the fam's dissapearance, Statement from Adam, This is really self indulgent, Written like a statement from the Magnus Archive, and the dissapearance of the rest of the team, can only recommed, if you really wanted to, it's not particualarly spooky, retelling of the time around shiro's disapearance, sorry - Freeform, this has about nothing to do with the Magnus Archives, you could see it as a stand alone episode from the MAG though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebirdsandtheboxes/pseuds/thebirdsandtheboxes
Summary: Shiro and the gang have gone missing. Adam has a feeling that it might not be as simple as 'gone missing'. And where do you turn with a story about people going missing under strange circumstances, if not to the Magnus Institute.This is basically just how I thought Adam's statement to the Magnus Institute could look like.
Relationships: Adam & Keith (Voltron), Adam/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The disappearing Cadets

**Author's Note:**

> This is extremely self indulgent. What happened was that I listened to too many Magnus Archive episodes back to back and spend too much time in the Voltron fandom. 
> 
> I do have to say that I took several creative liberties, including but not exclusive to Adam's last name, the time span of the happenings and the building that Shiro was brought to after he got back to earth. I formally apologise for any non canon or non popular headcanon decisions I made.
> 
> Also I don't have a good reason as to why Adam, who probably lives in America, would make a statement at the Magnus Institute, located in London, UK. Just don't think about it too much.

Statement made by Adam Weller regarding the disappearance of several people including his fiancé. Statement given on August 15th 2051 at the Magnus Institute. 

Statement begins:

I work at the Galaxy Garrison. I’m sure you’ve heard of us. We’re a space travel and military institution. I am an officer and a pilot and I work with young cadets, coaching them, teaching them. 

My fiancé, Takashi Shirogane, and I met there five years ago. He worked the same job as me, but he’s a year older than me so we only met once I was out of training. We started dating pretty soon after our first meeting. Those were the happiest years of my life and after three years he proposed to me. 

Two months after that he got the offer to go on the Kerberos mission. A mission to go to one of Pluto’s moon, the furthest from earth a human had ever been. He was excited obviously, but it was more than that. He had always had this thing about proving himself. And what better way to prove yourself than to go where nobody had gone before. Not that he needed to. He was the best pilot the Garrison had ever seen. Even in training he had already been breaking record over record. So I wasn’t surprised when he got the offer, they needed a good pilot for the mission and Takashi was the best. 

But the mission was dangerous and it would last five years. We had just gotten engaged and honestly I didn’t want to start our married life with a five year long distance relationship in which we couldn’t even properly talk to each other. It might sound selfish but I had already compromised a lot of my life for his ambitions and his career and this felt like one step too far. We fought a lot about this in the months leading up to the mission. I thought he was being selfish and reckless and he thought I was being hysterical and unreasonable. Even though I ended up being right, I will never forgive myself for our last conversation. 

It had been two weeks before the launch and we had been fighting, as always, and I gave him an ultimatum: If he went on the mission we were through. I asked him to choose between me and the mission and he chose the mission. I left and didn’t speak to him after that. I never filed the paperwork for calling off the engagement, I didn’t even really break up with him. Honestly, right up until the start of the mission, until the rocket left the ground, I still hoped he’d change his mind. He didn’t. He went on the mission and I stayed behind. 

Two months after the launch, the ship went missing. Well, that wasn’t what they told us. They told us that Takashi had crashed the ship and that he and his two team mates, Dr Samuel Holt and Matt Holt, had died. 

I knew Takashi, and I knew that he had never crashed a ship in his life. I want to say that it was more than a gut feeling that lead me to read the file but really it was probably only the grief and the anger that drove me to do so. I didn’t acquire it the legal way. I’m not even sure if there would have been a legal way for me to read it. But I got my hands on it. How I did should not be of concern for you. It was nothing too serious and I didn’t get caught. Still it might have been the biggest risk I have ever taken in my career at the Garrison or even in my whole life. But I needed to know and I don’t regret doing it. 

The file told me what I had expected: Takashi had not crashed the ship, it had simply disappeared. The last communication with the ship had been strange. I read the transcript; it started with a log, routine stuff, very boring normal things. I wish I could have listened to it and not just read it, Takashi had done the log, as far as I know, these were his last words. Sorry, I’m getting sentimental. 

There was some interference in the transmission and when it cut back in to the log, a couple of minutes later, there was shouting and loud crashing noises. Then the transmission cut out. Just complete radio silence. That is not only alarming but nearly impossible. The Garrison ships are built with a communication system that will always send signals. Even if there should be a crash that destroys most of the ship or a fog that interferes with most signals, there should be still a signal going through. It is one of the most innovative inventions of the Garrison. If there is still a piece of the ship somewhere, it should still send signals home. But there were no signals. The ship had just disappeared. 

I was concerned and devastated, of course, but the knowledge that it wasn’t Takashi’s fault filled me with enough closure that I would have let it rest. There was nothing I could do anyway. 

That had been about a year and a half ago. I’m here though, because that wasn’t all that happened. 

I mentioned that Takashi and I had been instructors for young recruits, well I still am I guess. 

About four years ago Takashi took in a student. Usually we’re not supposed to focus in on students like that, but this kid meant a lot to Takashi, and vice versa. Keith Kogane is his name, was his name. He was an orphan and an excellent pilot and student, top of his class. He had a promising future, breaking some of Takashi’s records already. He was recruited by the Garrison, that doesn’t happen a lot. Takashi was the one to invite him, that’s how they got so close, I think. 

But he was also hot headed. He got in fights constantly, even before he got to the Garrison he had a record of making trouble. And, true to his nature, he was just as short tempered at the Garrison. He lashed out easily and got into fights left and right. I think some of the students used that against him, kids are cruel like that. But Takashi was there to bust him out of every single precarious situation he got himself into. He talked to the head instructor and then talked to Keith and always made sure Keith could stay and would stay out of trouble in the future, which never worked obviously, but Takashi, patient and loving as he was, was always there. 

Since Takashi and I were dating I got to know the kid a bit too. When he wasn’t angry he was quiet, almost shy. I think he was very lonely. He’d lost his father as a young child and there was no trace of a mother or any other family. The only family he had was Takashi. It was never official obviously, Takashi never adopted him, but they felt like family to each other. 

So when Takashi disappeared it took only a week for Keith to get expelled. Allegedly he had punched the head instructor. I assume it was the rumour about Takashi crashing the ship. I understood his anger I was angry as well. Angry at the Garrison for ruining Takashi’s name and myself for letting him go and at myself for not making up with him before he left and at Takashi for leaving. Maybe I should have talked to Keith about it, we might have been able to help each other. But I never did. 

About two weeks after the memorial for the Kerberos crew and two weeks after Keith had been expelled I overheard someone from a town nearby talk about some rowdy kid camping out in his shed in the middle of the desert. I put two and two together and told him I knew the kid. I knew the guy fleetingly from his deliveries to the Garrison. He worked for a fuel company and we had talked several times through the years. He seemed like a decent guy. So I asked him if there was a possibility for Keith to stay in the shed if I paid rent for it. I may have also lied and said he was my nephew. He accepted, told me he didn’t use the shed anyway. 

I obviously checked to see if it was really Keith. I had been right, it was him. I told him he could stay, I had arranged something, and that he could always call me if there was anything I could do for him. I knew he had no one and nowhere to go. A 17 year old orphan with a history of trouble making who had just been expelled from an elite military program. Nobody would take him in. So I did. Not just out of the kindness of my heart I must admit. Mostly for Takashi. I was kind of glad to still have him around. He had meant a lot to Takashi, and as weird as that might sound, in a way he was all I had left of my fiancé. 

I paid the rent so he could stay there, visited him regularly and left him some money for food. He never spoke much. He hadn’t really been much of a talker before Takashi went missing but now he was even quieter. He was always working when I visited. At the time I didn’t know on what, and he never told me. In the beginning I still tried making conversation with him but as time went on I tried less. It’s another thing I regret. Maybe if I had gotten him to tell me what he had been working on I could have helped. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

About a year passed until three months ago he went missing too. It was July 1st and the day had been rather normal. It was evening and I stood at the window. That’s the only reason why I saw the comet. It was coming down near us. There is only desert for miles around the Garrison so I wasn’t really concerned that it might hit anything. But it was exciting. A comet coming down this close was great, easy research. But strange as well, because I hadn’t heard of any comet that was scheduled to hit earth anytime close to July 1st. So I went out to see if I could pick up any information in the halls. Word spreads fast at the Garrison. Strangely nobody was talking about what I had just seen. But there was the hushed atmosphere of a secret project. 

Secret projects are not unusual at the Garrison, we’re military after all, but this was different. Usually you’d hear the whispers and secrecy for months, getting gradually more noticeable over time. But there had been no build up. And it did not have the atmosphere of a project that was just starting. It had the feeling of something that is in its late stages. 

Now, I know that I’m using a lot of words like ‘feeling’ and ‘atmosphere’ and that’s not very solid evidence, but I have worked at the Garrison for long enough to pick up on the mood my superiors are in. I don’t rank high enough to be let in on any secret projects, but when you spend enough time in a place you learn to read it very well. So I knew there was something afoot and that it was unusual. 

We’re military, we don’t do spontaneous projects. And even less when it comes to space travel. Everything at the Garrison is well planned out and no mission is ever even approved without at least a two months’ notice let alone executed. That usually takes at least half a year. Only emergencies are an exception. And if a secret project is an emergency and probably has something to do with a comet falling from the sky, than that is not just odd but interesting as well. 

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but of course as a space enthusiast my mind went to aliens. I’m no conspiracy theorist and I don’t believe that the government is hiding any alien technology from us. But it intrigued me enough to at least go to where the whispers lead me and see if I could catch a glance of anything. 

I ended up at the morgue. A smaller building a bit off campus. It has a nice platform with a great view at the desert so I used that as a reason to stay. I stood there half facing the morgue and had a smoke. If anyone’d asked I’d have just said I was enjoying the view of the desert while smoking. That would be believable enough. 

I didn’t stand there for long, maybe ten minutes, I had just started my second cigarette. I’m no chain smoker, I just needed a reason to stay. A truck drove in. It was big with tinted windows and cargo that was covered with black tarp. It came from the desert and drove into the morgue’s garage. It wasn’t one of the normal body transport trucks. And it was rather late for anything to come in. Transports, no matter what was transported, usually stopped at six. It was already eight at that point. 

About five minutes after that I heard a loud engine, I heard it before I saw what made it. It was Keith’s bike. I hadn’t seen him come towards the Garrison, but I had also been pretty focused on the truck and the main road and the garage. The bike was one of those new fancy ones with hover technology, crazy fast those things, if Keith wasn’t such a good driver I would have been concerned for his health. I’m not entirely sure where he got it from, maybe Takashi gave it to him. 

He was driving away from the morgue, at a far enough distance that I couldn’t really see him on the bike, but I had seen it often enough to recognise it as Keith’s. I have to say I wasn’t really surprised to see Keith there that night. Not that I had expected him to be there, but I also wasn’t as surprised as one should think I was. After all he had a habit of getting himself into trouble. What was strange though, more than seeing him at the Garrison driving away at a very high speed and being followed by several vehicles, was that he was not alone on the bike. There were at least two more people, probably more, on there with him.

I mentioned that Keith was kind of a loner. He didn’t have friends and now that he wasn’t at the Garrison anymore he didn’t even have acquaintances anymore. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was the only human contact he had had in the last year. I couldn’t make out who the people on the bike with him were, they were too far away, but they must have been on there of their own volition, since Keith was going so fast, they should have had a hard time even staying on there if they weren’t determined to do so. 

I didn’t follow him. He was a good enough driver to escape the Garrison vehicles on his heels, or at least I hoped so. I also didn’t really want to get into trouble myself. Just standing there witnessing this put me in jeopardy. So I told myself I’d just check in on him the next day and went back to my quarters. It was selfish and cowardly, and again, in hindsight I wish I had followed Keith. To find out where he was going. Maybe I could have helped, or at least got some information. But I didn’t.

I did check on him the next day. But he wasn’t home and his bike wasn’t there. He also wasn’t there the next day. At that point three students had been reported missing. Lance McClain, Pidge Gunderson and Hunk Garett. All three very good students. I had met them once or twice, they had never been trouble makers or problem students. They hadn’t even really stood out at all. One of them looked oddly like Matt Holt, one of Takashi’s crew members. They had been last seen shortly before the comet had come down that evening. 

I can’t tell you for sure that their disappearance had something to do with Keith’s disappearance or the events of the previous evening. I also can't assure you that these kids were the people on Keith's bike. But it does fit together very well and I can't shake the feeling that they are related. 

When Keith was still not there the third day in a row I let myself into the shed. I have a spare key, just in case anything ever happened. The room was as it always looked. Like I said, I visited quite frequently. It wasn’t messy or dirty just cluttered. Papers and books laid on every available surface and laid out on the table on top of everything else was a map. It was a map of the desert, a part of it was circled in red. Since I didn’t really have anything else I could do, I took the map and went out to the area Keith had marked. 

It lead me to a cave. Outside I found Keith’s bike parked. Dust had already settled on it. It had probably stood there for the three days he was gone. I went through the tunnel where Keith’s bike was parked in front. The cave it should have led to was collapsed. I knew it should have been there because it was on the map. There was only rubble there. I don’t know much about caves but it looked like it had happened recently. I called the police. They didn’t find anything or anyone in the rubble. 

I reported Keith missing that day. I wasn’t very hopeful that they’d find him or that they’d even look for him. 

Since then I have spent a lot of time in Keith’s shack. At first I had just intended to clean it out and stop paying rent for it but as I went through Keith’s notes, the one he had been working on the whole year I got kind of hooked. That’s why I’m here. 

He had investigated Takashi’s disappearance and strange energy signals coming from that collapsed cave. The energy signals he had measured were tremendous, that nobody had picked it up before him was quite strange. But then again, the Garrison had built their headquarters practically on top of them, maybe that wasn’t a coincidence after all. The energy signals are gone now and somehow I can’t shake the feeling that they disappeared together with Keith and those kids. I studied his notes and photos and readings. I don’t know if you will think I’m crazy but I think all of those disappearances are connected and I don’t think it was something from earth that took them away. 

I know how jumping straight to aliens sounds but with the stuff Keith recorded and the report of Takashi going missing, I just can’t help but feel like nothing humans have built could cause these chain of events.

I found out about you guys in my own research, and I needed to tell someone. I thought if I had a chance with anyone believing me it would be you. 

Statement ends. 

All the things easily verifiable are correct. 

Takashi Shirogane did work for the Galaxy Garrison and disappeared alongside Mathew Holt and Dr Samuel Holt on May 13th 2050. There are no official records as to what happened and we could not get a report or even a coherent answer form our contact person at the Garrison. 

Keith Kogane was a student at the Garrison and got expelled May 27th 2050 and got reported as missing July 3rd 2051. 

Three Students, Lance McClain, Pidge Gunderson and Hunk Garett went missing on July 2nd 2051. 

We got access to the shed that Mr Kogane lived in and his notes, the measurements if they are indeed real, are unusual. Besides that it’s a lot of conspiracy theories. Nothing we can work with really.

The cave that Mr Weller mentioned exists and it is in the state he described. The police report of July 3rd 2051 also confirms his story. 

Further than that, there really is nothing we can do here. Even if Mr Weller was right with his assumption that it was aliens, which I don’t really believe, if I’m being honest, there is nothing we could do to find the seven missing people. 

Besides that, I don’t think this has anything to do with extra-terrestrial beings and more with military disappearing people, it wouldn’t be the first time. 

File end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my admidetly extremely self indulgent writing. I know that absolutley nobody asked for this (excluding maybe myself).
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.
> 
> If you want to, you can also read it on [tumblr](https://thetardisdaughter.tumblr.com/post/612030108300115968/a-self-indulgent-work-of-writing-about-my-current)


End file.
